1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to cooking devices, and more specifically, relates to drawer-type cooking devices in which a drawer body storing or loading therein an object to be cooked is placed in the interior of the cooking device body and capable of being drawn out therefrom.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a drawer type cooking device built into a kitchen unit, the size of the opening of a heating chamber disposed on a front side of the cooking device body is factually standardized into a few designs, and therefore, the width, depth and height of the built-in cooking device must satisfy determined sizes. For example, the cooking device that the present applicant has already provided to the market in the United States has a width of approximately 55 cm (24-inch standard) or approximately 77 cm (30-inch standard), depth of approximately 60 cm, and a height of approximately 37 cm. As described, there are two width sizes, a 24-inch standard size and a 30-inch standard size, but the heights and depths thereof are the same.
Since the heating chamber of a cooking device must be arranged together with electrical and mechanical components within the above-mentioned standard external size, the adjustment between the demands of users and the external size of the device occupies a large portion in designing the drawer type cooking device.
The width and depth of the heating chamber should be wide enough to enable pizza and other foods to be placed therein, and such size is relatively easy to realize, considering the portions occupied by the movement mechanisms disposed on both sides of the heating chamber. However, the height of even the external size of the drawer type cooking device is already lower than normal cooking devices placed on counter tops, so that if the cooking device is designed via normal structural design, the ceiling height of the cooking device becomes too small. If the ceiling height of a high-frequency cooking device is too low, it becomes difficult to use cooking containers with sufficient depths, and it is impossible to reheat drinks in a cup having a high height since the cup will not fit in the cooking device with a low ceiling. The users will be unsatisfied if commercial coffee cups (coffee mugs) provided at coffee shops or the like cannot be placed in the cooking device.
Therefore, in order to ensure the desired ceiling height with respect to the limited heating chamber height, it is necessary to cut down structures arranged on the ceiling portion and the floor portion as much as possible, for example by moving and rearranging the devices on the ceiling portion and the floor portion to side walls, but there are devices still occupying the ceiling and floor portions that cannot be moved to other spaces in order to exert the necessary functions of the cooking device, which was a drawback in designing a user-friendly drawer type cooking device.
Further, an illuminating light within the chamber of cooking devices, especially microwave ovens, is normally fixed to the inner wall of a heating chamber. During cooking operation and opening of the door, the illuminating light is turned on to illuminate the interior of the heating chamber so as to illuminate the object being cooked (cooked food) in the heating chamber for the convenience of the user. However, in a drawer type cooking device, when the door is opened and closed, the whole body of the drawer is moved together with the object to be cooked. Therefore, when the drawer body is drawn out by opening the door, the food having been moved together with the drawer body cannot be illuminated by the illuminating light fixed on the wall. Especially in a large-size cooking device, the light emitted from the illuminating light in the chamber does not reach the food drawn out from the chamber.
In a rotating door widely adopted in cooking devices, a rotating shaft is provided at a hinge portion and the distance of movement of the door is zero at the portion, enabling a known arrangement to be adopted in which a lead wire is disposed at the hinge portion or an area near the hinge portion so as to supply power and transmit signals between the cooking device body and the door. However, in drawer type cooking devices, since the whole drawer body moves and no shaft corresponding to the hinge portion exists, if a lead wire is used to supply power and transmit signals, the lead wire must be bent and extended repeatedly in response to the movement of the drawer body, which is extremely difficult from the viewpoint of durability, and in order to dispose an illuminating device on the door being moved away from the cooking device body, it is necessary to supply power to the door, that is, to connect the cooking device body and the door portion via a lead wire or the like in order to supply power to the illuminating light source disposed on the drawer body from the cooking device body.
It is also common to use rails instead of lead wires for power distribution, but they are extremely expensive. On the other hand, noncontact type power transmission means require a power storage means to be disposed on the door, since when the door is opened, it is impossible to send power and signals to the door. Furthermore, since the transmission efficiency is deteriorated when the inner side of the door is not in close contact with the front side of the heating chamber, durability is require with respect to the opening and closing of the door.
Incandescent lamps used conventionally as illuminating lights inside cooking devices have drawbacks in that they are liable to filament damage due for example to the impact caused by opening and closing the door, that they have extremely low illuminating efficiency requiring a large current and causing power delivery difficulties, and that they are large in size and cause large heat generation requiring ventilation and occupying a large space on the door.
Japanese patent application laid-open publication No. 3-45820 (patent document 1) discloses a high frequency cooking device to be placed on a kitchen counter or the like in an open manner, comprising a cooking device body including a cooking chamber for storing an object to be cooked, a door for shutting the cooking chamber from atmosphere, a bottom plate slid in an interlocking motion with the movement of the door, and a slide mechanism for sliding the bottom plate smoothly.
Furthermore, there is known a drawer type cooking device built into a kitchen counter in which an object to be cooked is loaded in a drawer body drawn out of the cooking device body, and the drawer is moved back into the cooking device body so as to cook the object within the cooking device.
The present applicant has disclosed in Japanese patent application laid-open publication No. 2005-221081 (patent document 2) a cooking device having a plurality of sliding mechanisms disposed on the exterior of a heating chamber for moving the drawer body together with a door so that the drawer body is drawn out and stored with respect to the interior of the heating chamber.
Further, Japanese utility model application laid-open publication No. 06-50181 (patent document 3) discloses a power distribution structure for a furniture capable of preventing wires from being exposed. According to the disclosed power distribution structure of a furniture, conduction areas and non-conduction areas are disposed respectively in a fixed section and a moving section constituting the slide portion of the furniture, so that power conduction is enabled by having a fixed section conductor and a moving section conductor come into contact with each other at a given slide condition. The structure realizes power conduction and the switching thereof by having the conductor in the slide portion come into contact with the conductor or a nonconductor.
Japanese patent application laid-open publication No. 9-36557 (patent document 4) discloses a slide rail used for drawing in and out inner units of office automation equipments such as copiers, having a case-side rail formed of an electrically conductive material, a unit-side rail formed of an electrically conductive material and electrically connected to a unit, and an electrically conductive contact provided between the front outer surface of the case-side rail and the rear outer surface of the unit-side rail so as to electrically connect the case-side rail and the unit-side rail together. According to the disclosed slide rail, the electricity charged to the unit is conducted from the unit-side rail via the electrically conductive contact to the case-side rail and reaches the case, which is earthed thereby.
Japanese patent application laid-open publication No. 2004-40863 (patent document 5) discloses a cable guide bent in an S-shaped form guiding a supplyer cable connecting a fixed structure and a moving structure capable of sliding movement. According to the disclosed cable guide, the sagging of the cable can be stabilized and absorbed by a simple configuration. Further, Japanese patent application laid-open publication No. 60-211811 (patent document 6) discloses a means for receiving energy in a noncontact manner and converts the same into electric power, and to perform data transmission in a noncontact manner utilizing electromagnetic induction or photovoltaic devices.
As disclosed in patent documents 3 and 4, some prior arts have been disclosed in the field of office machinery and plant facility regarding means for ensuring electric conduction between a fixed member and a movable member, but the application of such means to cooking devices for household use is difficult, since such means are extremely expensive compared to the conventional power supply means such as lead wires.
Further, the noncontact power supply means disclosed in patent document 5 requires to activate an operation unit and a display unit via a power storage means such as a capacitor when the door is opened, which is already commercially applied to refrigerator doors since they are rarely left opened for a long period of time, but since the door of cooking devices are possibly left opened for a long period of time, and since the application requires a large-scale power storage means and various high-level controls regarding turning off the storage means and bringing the same to a standby state, the application of such noncontact power supply means is not a convenient method to solve the problems of the prior art drawer type cooking devices.